I was having a conversation with a friend earlier this week who was talking about .AI, which they mistook for a new domain extension. When I told them it wasn’t and it was actually a ccTLD, this brought up the question, “well then what new domain extensions are out there?” I turned the question back to him and he rattled off some extensions like .CLUB, .XYZ, .ME, .CO, .IO (which is also a ccTLD) and then he started drawing a blank.
While I think it’s easy for those of us who have been in the domain industry for years to know every extension under the sun, it’s important to remember that many consumers don’t. I asked him if he knew about .GURU, .LIVE, .BUZZ, and continued to get a blank stare.
Now I’m not saying that other new extensions aren’t doing a good job marketing, in fact many of them are. The challenge is, with so many new domain extensions out there, how can you really expect consumers who spend less than .1% of their time dealing with domain names to know them?
So now I wanted to turn the question back to you – what domain extension do you think real people (yes like your family, friends, etc.) actually know off the top of their head? Comment and let your voice be heard!
Morgan, great post, but you seem to be asking the wrong question.
While the answer to YOUR question is…”for the most part, theyre not familiar with any of them”…
The more important question relates to the point you touched on, i.e., why are the registries doing such a lousy job promoting gTLDs?
And that answer (imo) is that (i) they are not demonstrating their commitment to spreading the word because theyre spending the revenues on non-marketing activities, and (ii) they show no innovation in their sparse marketing efforts.
For example, i don’t recall seeing a single registry run a Shark Tank-type contest, where they’d fund great online businesses that leverage [their] extension for a website address. The PR value of such a contest would yield 100x the investment. But no one’s done it.